majiksznak

The Onion: The Vatican against stem cell research...

I wish, time and time again, that the Vatican were not composed of the foremost scientists on embryonic research in the world. This makes it very difficult for anyone to argue a case against them, and we are repeatedly left at an impasse.

Patrick Stewart on "Extras". Thanks, Buster!

But I've seen everything...

The Pope wants to get his papal pals together to discuss evolution.

Video of a guy fooling with cards. Some of what this guy does is excellent. Thanks, Buster!

The great Scott Adams just took himself down a notch in my esteem. He fucked up spelling Gandhi (I would have had to look it up to know it wasn't "Ghandi" myself), and bitched and whined and made fun of the people who corrected him rather than admitting his mistake.

This is the kind of customer service you get when calling 911...

Acoustic Levitation Chamber: making stuff float using sound waves. (from Music Thing)

Only Gay Eskimo by Corky and the Juice Pigs. This is on compfused.com, so the ads are a little NSFW.

Performer goes down on stage? Her cohorts do not give a flying shit.

Panda sneeze. Just go ahead and watch it: trust me.

This cat likes to get licked by dogs. Sick...

If I know what you guys like (and I think I do), you'll enjoy another white guy dancing. He seems to pull a lot of Napoleon Dynamite-esque moves.

Family Feud host can't stop laughing at stupid contestant's answer.

If you haven't yet seen David Brent's Microsoft UK Training Video, check it out. Awesome stuff.

Recently, Stephen Colbert recorded video some footage of himself dorking out with a lightsaber. Internet Dorks made it better:

• Cartoon Lightsaber effects
• Colbert Lightsaber 2.0
• Stephen Colbert vs. Star Wars Kid

T-shirt that says "I am not a terrorist" in arabic.

Game Prequels and Sequels from Something Awful

Pluto is no longer considered a planet. I shed a tear. Also check out the Save Pluto Worth 1000 Photoshop contest.

This product is totally surreal. It's candy, and the top of the container has seeds that will sprout grass if you water it. This is convergence at its finest, folks!

Do you like vocoders? Sure you do! (From Music Thing)

Holy Hell! Is that really what the PS3 graphics will look like? Because that would just be super.

I haven't really seen anything on the XBox360 that makes it look that much better than the older generation of game machines: it's basically like an XBox that can push more polygons. The screenshots and videos I've seen that supposedly show off the PS3 have looked pretty mind-blowing.

The Arch Bishop Don Magic Juan is a pimp.

I don't know: I don't get the goblet thing.

Apparently, Forbes ran an article advising men not to marry career women. Recently, I mean. Not 50 years ago or anything.

Weird Al Yankovic's MySpace page, featuring his new single, "Don't Download This Song".

New! Black Sznak shirts at Cafepress. They're so expensive. I'm so sorry. Continue not buying them. What's another custom shirt printing place?

Bob Dylan complaining about digital music encoding.

Color blindness test.

Ladies, are you too poor to hire a male escort? Help is afoot! (Link stolen from Something Awful)

WARNING! Do not click on the gallery link! NSFW! In fact, Not Safe For Eyes!

News bloopers. Thanks, Heather!

Snakes on a Plane isn't the roaring success the studio thought it would be based on its popularity online.

That's odd. I'm fooling around with Google ads on my site found that in some cases, the ads at the bottom didn't appear. It seems like if instead of choosing ads, it chooses to display a donation request to help hurricane victims, the second block of ads doesn't work.

Anyway, AdSense is neat. Nobody's ever clicked on an ad, but hey: if one ever appears that is useful, then that's awesome.

I actually don't mind Google text ads on a page. What do you guys think?

SiteProNews is a web-marketing newsletter that I read. They have some good information, but they are constantly making themselves sound like a 90 year old man talking about iPods. In this article, they keep referring to the text-only web browser, Lynx, as "a Lynx Viewer":

This may be accomplished by a Lynx Viewer which is a text-mode web browser. Additionally, a Lynx Viewer can help you determine if your web pages are accessible...

Basically, this sounds like:

Them kids! Them... kids... is uploadin' iPods all the time, and they'z iPoddin' the music right... right into their ears, with tha innernet... Which is a series of tubes! It's... It's not a truck!"

It saddens me to think that they don't have techs around to help them not sound stupid, because they do bring up some interesting topics.

Go to this web site then click on "Game Over". It's stop-motion recreations of classic games done with household objects.

This picture is so wrong. Too late: you can't undo seeing it! Now go see the other pictures.

Bullshitr: the web 2.0 bullshit generator.

Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator. This is the stuff of Nerd dreams. Now if only they also had an Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator vs. Robocop... Or perhaps Alien vs. Predator vs. Terminator vs. Robocop vs. Velociraptors vs. Neo.

IMDB gives Snakes on a Plane 8.2 / 10.

Bandwidth thief's point of view.

Another repost: the Hall of Douchebags. Here you'll find hundreds of pictures of indie bands / singers. Many of the comments are LOL-worthy.

Fatboy Slim likes my speakers. I have the previous generation: the DM601-S2s, but I still choose to be flattered. (Thanks to Buster for the link)

MI-III parody from the MTV Movie Awards. Hilarious if you've seen the movie. Possibly funny even if you haven't.

Cat squeezes into a bottle.

How smart do you have to be to win on the Price is Right? Apparently, about as bright as a glass of tepid water. Here is the proof. I love how Bob Barker has to sit down at the end. Plus you can see him mouthing the words:

I can't believe that happened... I can't believe it.

Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans special. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

I loved this line:

Congratulations to Prime Minister Horton on his double double.

Comedy Central will be airing the Roast of William Shatner. I can't wait. Check out the preview / promo clips.

Short film: Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown. Violence!

The Onion A.V. Club interviews Samuel L. Jackson.

The Onion continues to be awesome.

Lesbians... Shocking!

I've linked to Gallery of the Absurd, but it bears mentioning again. The guy draws excellent caricatures of famous people. Check out the Mel Gibson bumper sticker and the Paris Hilton doll ad. This is the same guy who drew the Britneyroo picture.

A tribute to the Wilhelm Scream: an oft-used sound effect of a dude screaming.

Photography with expired film.

Yet another XBox 360 Box auction.

Sides of the box are very smooth with no scratches, and minimal creases.

Awesome. Thanks, Artoo!

Those Godless Icelanders believe in evolution! Mad props to Turkey for being the only country on the list that beats out the United States in its rejection of evolution.

You thought the wacky things people searched for that landed them on this site were weird? Check this out.

Christopher Walken branches out.

Senator Ted Stevens has been the laughingstock of the web for a little while now. I heard about it but hadn't actually listened to his rant until this weekend.

His hilariously bad explanation of "the internet" was played on the Daily Show, and I laughed my ass off.

Here was the first online occurrence that I remember of his crap-tacular explanation.

DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix: "A Series of Tubes".

As Jon Stewart said, he does sound more like a crazy old man than a US Senator qualified to speak on Net Neutrality.

Boing Boing has had a field day with Ted Stevens.

The Internet: A Series of Tubes: the t-shirt.

I also wish to make a t-shirt (Mike: I'm lookin' at you). This will feature a bunch of pipes (I was thinking of using a screen shot of the 3D Pipes screensaver, but then I'd look like I was copying the Daily Show) and the text, "Not a truck!"

Drawing patterns on the surface of water using an array of wave generators.

Pitching Lucas: a short film based on pitching ideas to George Lucas. Well done.

Lost Star Wars scenes. Get 'em while they're hot. And by hot I mean still around.

This box automatically generates trance music. I doubt electronic music haters will appreciate that this is funny.

Full trailer for the Borat movie. I'm not used to that, but that's fine.

Airzooka vs. mini RC Helicopter. The latest replacement helicopter works. I took off the body and it seems to fly longer, but I need to adjust the blades to account for the loss of weight: I have to have the rotation trim all the way to the left right now. I put some twist-ties at the front to account for the center of balance being different.

Sweet video: the Time Fountain. UV strobe lights + falling drops.

Britney Spears is a complete fucking idiot. It is no longer surprising that she married K-Fed. Look at her! She's insane!

Larvae in Sweden. Gross!

What does your car say about you? Slightly NSFW ads.

Muffin, the spider outside my window at work, pops back down to her web every once in a while.

Sweet music video.

Apparently, HD DVD is better than Blu-Ray.

Darth Vader being a smartass.

Plasma TVs are a girl's best friend.

Lore Sjoberg is funny. Here's an excerpt from Condemning Comic-Con Costumes. Also read his other works.

Tinfoil people
The beginning costumer loves tinfoil, because it's shiny and shiny means space and the future. The problem is that tinfoil, applied to any household object, still looks like tinfoil. If you're dressed as Wolverine and you put tinfoil on your claws, it just looks like Wolverine couldn't figure out how to work the Jiffy Pop container. And if you try to make a whole robot costume from tinfoil, you look like you're going straight to the nearest elementary school to do a rap about recycling. Find something better.

Awesome beatboxing. He's apparently like the fiance of the friend of a friend of mine. Or something.

Here's what was wrong with Superman Returns.

Don't get me wrong: I loved Superman Returns. If you haven't seen it, go. Your inner child, fresh from experiencing the glee of watching the Superman: The Movie, will thank you. Brandon Routh was great as Superman, and managed to mimic a lot of Reeve's style. Kevin Spacey is always great, and pulled off a great Lex Luthor. I would have liked him to do it a bit more menacingly, but that's just me. Anyway, I like to gripe about things, so here I go. By the way, the picture was taken from this page.

Everything after this point is a spoiler, and you probably shouldn't read it if you haven't seen the movie. If you haven't seen the original movies, watch Superman (at least) before seeing this movie.

The opening credits mirror the style of the original Superman movie, and from that point, you're in Nostalgia Country. The feeling persists for about 45 minutes, then you start to realize the movie is running out of steam. What you may not know, by the way, is that the movie is just over 2 and a half hours long. I liked the ideas in the movie, but they were stretched too thin and almost every time something interesting was brought up, they blew their wad right away and let the idea fizzle out.

Lex Luthor's evil plan to grow a Kryptonite continent that would wreak havoc on the planet and leave him the most powerful man on Earth was a good one, but the revelation of what he was planning somehow seemed to lack import. It was a cool idea, though.

The movie introduces a lot of interesting things, then doesn't do anything with them. You tend to lose patience during any given sequence, because they're just "doing stuff" without keeping it interesting. It's as if the movie says, "I'm going to do this!" and then does it exactly like what you expected. If you're shown a magic trick, but you're told what will happen before it starts, it's not nearly as exciting.

For example, the shuttle / plane scene is laid out for you. You are told what could go wrong, and then you watch as it goes wrong: there are no surprises.

The movie also tended to feel "wishy-washy" because it failed to even try to explain certain things. It may be bad to bog down a movie with boring explanations, but the feeling here was that not even the writers could think of good reasons for what was happening. Superman is vulnerable to Kryptonite, but a bunch of stuff happens in the movie and you're left wondering, "Wait: how vulnerable is he? How come he was able to do this but not that?" I realize it's all made-up stuff, but without an underlying consistency, it doesn't feel coherent.

I was excited at the revelation that Lois' son was Superman's as well, but they made the same mistake as with a lot of other parts of the movie: they may as well have wrapped up the movie right then, because they never did anything with the revelation.

I don't think these gripes could be addressed by re-editing the movie, either, because every idea brought up in the movie follows that same pattern: a sharp spike of enthusiasm right at the beginning, then gradually fading interest as you are shown something that doesn't surprise you.

If you've seen the movie and would like to comment, please do!

I picked up one of those mini RC helicopters: They used to be hideously overpriced and are now only slightly overpriced here in Canada. London Drugs has them for $50 (if you can find one). In theory, they're rad. Here's the story of the first 2:

I bought one yesterday evening, and found that the rotors had been mashed up a bit when the helicopter was packaged. One of the blades curled up with respect to the others, so it was a bit wobbly. It also didn't seem to want to go forward: the little propeller at the rear didn't have enough lift to tilt the helicopter forward.

I exchanged it for the other one London Drugs had in stock this morning, but this time we looked in the box. The rotors looked fine, but the side of the cockpit was all mashed up (this was clearly not a repackaged unit). The guy at LD ordered another one (he said, "we still have thousands in the warehouse"). In the meantime, he said to just take the mashed one until the replacement comes in. I tried to fly it at work: it went up about 3 feet, then the top rotor's gear seemed to disconnect from the drive motor and it went down.

I'm still looking forward to getting a functioning one, as the wobbly one that didn't go forward or backward was still sort of fun.

Apparently, Appalachian State University is HOT HOT HOT.

This hamster is nuts!